Armageddon

He had to be. The two specialists aboard Jersey were the last two he had. The other two had quit.

As Mack adjusted his course and started to climb through five thousand feet, he saw something flare in the right side of his windscreen. It took a moment for him to realize he was seeing a fire.

“Jersey, this is Brunei Dragon One. I think I see a ship on fire. Stand by.”

Mack gave the throttle a shove and turned in the direction of the flames. From this distance, the fire looked more like the sparkle of a gem, glittering red. The ship itself was a gray shadow around it.

“Mack, we see it,” said Brea

“You got a Mayday or something?” Mack asked Brea

Mack alerted his ground controller, who staffed a combat center at the International Airport control tower back in the capital. (As in many other smaller countries around the world, the International Airport or IAP handled military as well as civilian flights.) Besides calling out the navy and local harbor patrol, Mack told the controller to contact the Malaysian air force at Labuan. The small air station there—the only other air base besides Brunei IAP on the northern side of Borneo—operated a squadron of French-built Aerospatiale SA 316B Alouette Ills for search and rescue.

“We’ll stay in the area until rescue is underway, give ‘em some hope, anyway,” Mack added.

Brea

“Roger that,” said Mack. He was now within two miles of the ship, and could see that the vessel had settled low in the water. “I’m going to get close and see what I can see.”

Low and slow was one thing the A-37B did really well. Mack decided to pop on his landing lights, not so much because it would help him see better, but because it would show survivors he was there and help was on the way. His speed notched down steadily until finally it seemed as if he were going backward.

As he approached, it looked to him as if there were two ships on fire. He banked, hand gentle on the stick as he slipped around for another look.

The ship had broken in half somewhere around the superstructure.

Must’ve been one hell of an accident for it to blow up like that, thought Mack, sliding around for another pass.

THE MEGAFORTRESS PILOT HAD FORGOTTEN TO TELL THE computer that the exercise was over, and so it kept blinking a warning at him that he was outside of the programmed flight area. It was nothing more than an a

But boy, it bothered her.

Finally, the pilot turned to her and a

“It just needs to be acknowledged. Tell the computer the exercise is over. You might check your course, as well,” she added, noticing that he had allowed his heading to drift well to the west.

“Right. Yes,” said the pilot. He was in his late thirties, older than Brea

Something else bugged her. The crew was, well, quiet.

In an American plane, certainly on a Dreamland crew, the specialists would be singing out, talking about contacts and the like. But the two men at the mission stations behind her on the flight deck were silent. Brea

By now, Mack had completed a third orbit of the stricken vessel and reported that he saw no boats in the water. He switched to a different frequency and began talking to the harbor patrol, which had been alerted by their ground controller.

“Captain, what do you think of this?” asked Deci. “Hit that two scan, low resolution. I’m feeding it.”

Enhanced by the computer, the image showed a dark blur in the left-hand corner of the screen, racing along the coast toward Malaysia.

“Just a ghost?” asked Brea

“No. There’s something there,” said Deci. “Moving real fast—out around three hundred knots.”

“What boat goes that fast? Cigarette speed boat?”

“Never heard of one even half that fast. Has to be a plane, but according to the radar it’s at three feet.”

“Three feet?”

“I know it’s weird,” added Deci, “but it’s a live contact. The computer has never seen it before”

“I’ll bet.” Brea

“Give me a vector,” he snapped.

*   *   *

CLEAN, THROTTLE LASHED TO THE LAST STOP, AND A GOOD wind at its back, the manual said the A-37B Dragonfly could do 440 knots.

Mack had it nudging 470 as he tracked in the direction Brea

He leaned his head far forward, as if the few inches of extra distance would help his eyes filter away the shadows and mist.

“Dragon One to Jersey—yo, Brea

“Stand by.”

She came back again with a GPS location.

“Hey, I’m in the Stone Age, remember? I don’t have a GPS locator on board.”

“Sorry—you look like you’re almost on top of it. Two miles.” Mack reached for the throttle, easing off on his speed. The shoreline was an irregular black haze to his right.

Sixty seconds later, Brea

Stand by yourself, he thought. He had let his altitude slip to two thousand feet. He was passing just over a marina, but moving too fast to sort out what he saw.

“Pleasure boat,” he said with disgust, snapping the speak button as he tucked into a bank to check it out. “Hey, Jersey girl—did you have me chase a pleasure boat? There’s a marina down here.”

“You know a pleasure boat that goes three hundred knots? Stand by. We’re looking for it.”

Mack circled around. There were at least two dozen boats in the marina, but no airplanes.

“Not a seaplane?” he asked, though he didn’t see one. “Seaplane? If so the computer couldn’t find it on its index. Hold on.”

Mack pulled out the large area map from his kneeboard and unfolded it, checking to see where he was.

“Dragon One, we have it twenty-five miles to your northeast, along the coast:’ said Brea

“Your sure about that, Jersey?”

“We’re as sure as—stand by,” she added, a note of disgust creeping into her voice.

Mack started a turn in the direction she had advised, but as he came to the new course Brea

“Right,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re trying.”

“I’m looking at empty ocean.”

“You’re right on the vector.”

She added that the Brunei authorities had just reported a ship underway to rescue survivors at the stricken ship, which had now been identified as a freighter due to dock at 6 A.M. in Brunei. Mack flew about ten miles to the east-northeast, then banked into an orbit fifteen hundred feet over the waves, riding a curlicue as he looked for Brea